Flying V!

The Dutch airline KLM has announced that they will develop a V-format aircraft, which they hope will make travel a little more environmentally friendly in the future.

They are naming the planemodel, Flying-V, which sounds quite logical given the shape of the aircraft. The aircraft was originally designed by the student Justus Benad at the Technical University of Berlin and then the project continued to develop at the Dutch university TU Delft.

The aim of the Flying-V is to be able to fly 314 passengers and these, their luggage and the aircraft’s fuel will be transported in the aircraft’s V-shaped wings. According to the researchers at TU Delft, the Flying-V will use 20 percent less fuel than, for example, the Airbus A350-900 that can transport 300 – 350 passengers.

The team behind Flying-V hopes to fly a model on a smaller scale this fall and they will also make a model of the aircraft’s interior. This will allow visitors to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to check it out in October when KLM celebrates a hundred years as a company.

KLM and TU Delft aim to have the plane in the air seriously sometime between 2040 – 2050. So it will be a while before we see it flying in the sky.